


A Firm Handshake

by ahimsabitches



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Iroh likes whips and chains, implication of BDSM, just a little palaver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 05:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8358799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: Iroh and June strike a deal.





	

Iroh had passed her table twice—taking the trash out and sweeping up—and June hadn’t looked up.

He couldn’t guess why she’d landed here, of all places, but the why didn’t matter. An image flashed: the grip of her small, strong hands around her beast’s reins as he rode behind her. Those hands mattered. The light in her eyes, the color of old blood or royal velvet, mattered. She was viciously beautiful and sublimely lethal and Iroh was drawn to her like a moth to, well, flame.

He slid into the creaking wicker seat across the small round table from her and slid a steaming cup of genmaicha tea, warmed in his hand, close to hers. “Yours is one of the last faces I expected to see in my humble tea shop,” he said without accusation or gratitude.

“Didn’t know this carpeted hovel was yours,” June droned by way of answer.

Iroh sipped his tea. “Where is your shirshu? I didn’t see him out front.”

June said nothing. She sat forward, leaning heavily on her elbows. The lamps were dim for closing; he could barely make out the corner of one dark eye between the inverted V of her inky hair.  

“Probably went to find a kinder master,” Zuko said from inside the stockroom near June’s table. “I can’t blame him for not wanting to be ridden and whipped like that.”

Iroh cast a sidelong glance at Zuko’s back. “Speak for yourself, nephew.”

Though Zuko’s back was turned, Iroh could sense a dramatic eyeroll. Fire Lord Eminent or no, his nephew was still a teenager.

June’s fist slowly closed around the small teacup. In a sudden backward jerk, she drained the cup, then slammed it down. Then her night-wolf eyes slammed Iroh.  “Careful what you wish for, old man,” she snarled.

Iroh sipped his tea and watched the nervous, spindly shadows thrown by the lamps jitter over her face. As it had done many times before in situations more and less pleasing than this, his mind gently peeled into two halves. One studied—and appreciated—the curves and creases of her lean, wiry body. They were the precision-tuned muscles of a striking cobra. The other half of him sensed anger, well-controlled but deeply felt: an igneous crust over a sense of loss and fear raw as a newborn volcano.

“I can help you find your shirshu,” Iroh said.

June’s eyes glittered flatly. “What makes you think you can out-track a career tracker, old man? I’ve made more money doing this than you’d make in five lifetimes at this dinky shop.”

“I said I’d _help_ you, not beat you at your own game. There are some doors in this world closed even to you.”

June appeared to consider this. It was hard to tell; her face did not change except for the smallest uptick in the corner of one eyebrow. The wicker chair chattered woodenly in the evening emptiness as June rose from her hunch over the table and crossed her arms over her chest. “Let me guess,” she spat, “in return, you want me to give Nyla a rest for a night and ride _you_ instead.”

“More than one night, if I can help it,” Iroh said, letting the smile into his eyes only.

June did not smile. Her eyebrow ticked up another notch.

Zuko made industrious moving sounds in the storeroom.

Her chair chirred again; she leaned forward and placed her right elbow on the table, arm vertical, her hand formed into a loose claw. “ _Beat_ me, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Iroh sipped the last of his tea slowly, pretending to turn her terms over in his mind, but he’d known and agreed to her terms before she’d even moved the first time. It was small, the smile that curled up on his face, but it was meaningful, and it met her haughty sneer unafraid.

“Don’t plan on using Fire Nation money to fix this place if you two wreck it, Uncle,” Zuko said from the storeroom.

Iroh leaned forward and settled his warrior’s paw into June’s small steel grip.


End file.
